The Tricycle Theatre in London, north of Britain, has called off the UK Jewish Film Festival (UKJFF), scheduled for next November, over sponsorship by the Israel government. The Festival is considered to be the largest annual cinema festival funded by the Israel across the European continent over the past eight years. At least 26 films had been due to be screened in the 2014 festival. The theater venue said the festival has been kicked out because it was sponsored by the Israeli Embassy in London. “The festival should not accept funding from any party to the current conflict,” the theater director said pointing to the current Gaza tragedy. The incident makes part of a series of anti-Israel rallies and positions forged among the British artistic milieu and in harmony with the rise of the boycott of Israel campaigns

Emergency supplies of rice and wheat will be distributed on 143 Gaza families by the Palestinian Ministry of Social Affairs and UNRWA, officials said Monday.

Packs consisting of 10 kilograms of rice and 30 kilograms of wheat will be distributed on Gazans across the Gaza Strip.

The director of the Social Security Department said that families living in the Gaza Strip will receive supplies “disregarding their living conditions, who they are or if they are refugees or non-refugees.”

However, Riyad al-Bitar added that families already receiving supplies from UNRWA, the World Food Programme, Oxfam, or coupons program would be excluded.

Al-Bitar added that families can receive the supplies by showing an ID card, a drivers license or a Palestinian passport.

A spokesman of the Ministry of Social Affairs highlighted that the goal of this campaign is to make it easier for families to receive supplies under the “exceptional” conditions in the Gaza Strip.

After two hours waist-deep in the sea, Sameer al-Hissi says his paltry haul of tiny fish is not the only consequence he and Gaza's fishermen are suffering from Israel's offensive.

Ashore, he lifts up his t-shirt to show red-brown blotches across his chest and stomach, the result, he says, of spending his mornings in a sea heavily tainted with smelly sewage since Israeli strikes knocked out the power station supplying electricity to treatment plants.

Following the plants' closure, levels of raw sewage released into the sea are higher, meaning smaller catches and the risk of illness.

"Sewage in the sea today is affecting people and the fish they eat," said the wiry 52-year-old, sat in the shade of an umbrella with the basket carrying the 14 tiny fish he caught.

Before the conflict erupted on July 8 he fished from his boat in Gaza port, going up to three nautical miles out to sea in accordance with the limit imposed by the Israelis.

Now he spends two hours every morning wading through the surf on the beach casting a small net to bring back food for his family. But he says that there are fewer and fewer fish to be caught off the beach because the raised level of untreated sewage is driving them further out to sea.

"If their environment is dangerous, the fish leave," he said. "Like people."

The waste is also making people ill, more seriously than himself, he said, talking of children who had become sick after swimming in the sea.

The head of Gazan fishermen's syndicate agreed the problem had got worse since water treatment plants had stopped working.

"Of course, we know the problem of pollution in the sea is worse than before the war," Nizar Ayish said. "Currently there is no treatment of the water because of the war."

'End solution'

Complicating the problem is the fact that it is too dangerous for members of his body, which he said has 4,000 members, to inspect exactly how much sewage is currently being released into the sea where Hissi fishes. Four young boys playing on the beach on July 16 were killed when Israeli forces shelled the area.

Monzer Shoblak from the Coastal Municipalities Water utility said the amount of waste pumped into the sea had remained about the same as before the war, around 25,000 cubic metres, but because of the electricity and damage to a treatment station, everything is now untreated.

The amount "collected from the city and pumped to the waste water treatment plant has not increased ... it has become just raw sewage," he said.

Back on the same Mediterranean beach, Hissi near the Shati refugee camp, Yasir al-Sultan only ventures 200 meters offshore in his small boat, standing and paddling himself out before casting his nets.

A fisherman for 30 years, he too has been struggling with conditions since the war started, and blames the rising levels of sewage in the water and the rubbish floating in the seas for his declining catches.

"For the most part, the environment here is polluted, it's dirty," he said. "We fish here because it's a little further from the pipelines."

Pointing to the port behind him, where the rooms where the fishermen kept their nets and equipment were blackened from Israeli shelling, Sultan said the sewage in the water has even put Gazans off spending time at the port.

"The port was supposed to be a touristic place, but because of the sewage, no one comes because they don't like the smell."

But Sultan was more concerned with seeing an end to the fighting as soon as possible.

"We want an end solution –- the Israelis are shelling us every day," he said.

From early morning on Monday, as a new truce began, fishermen headed out to sea in dozens of small launches after staying at home during the conflict for fear of Israeli shelling.

But most went no further than a couple of hundred meters offshore as in the distance, a Israeli naval vessel could be seen patrolling several kilometers further out.

The Lebanese-born British lawyer was one of three top experts appointed to a commission of inquiry by the UN Human Rights Council, which ordered the investigation last month.

The other members of the inquiry team are Doudou Diene of Senegal, who has previously served as the UN's watchdog on racism and on post-conflict Ivory Coast, and Canadian international lawyer William Schabas.

In the face of fierce opposition from Israel and the United States, the 47-member UN Human Rights Council voted on July 23 to create the commission of inquiry.

The decision came after a marathon seven-hour emergency session of the top UN human rights body, where the Israelis and the Palestinians traded accusations over war crimes.

The probe team has been tasked with reporting back to the council by March.

Alamuddin's family, who are from Lebanon's Druze community, fled to Britain during the country's 1975-1990 civil war.

The 36-year-old, who is fluent in Arabic, French and English, studied at a French school in London and holds degrees from Oxford and New York University.

Alamuddin is no stranger to international investigations and conflicts.

She worked with the international tribunal examining the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri and assisted ex-UN head Kofi Annan in efforts to make peace in Syria.

Among her legal clients have been Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the controversial founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange.

The UN Human Rights Council has appointed a three-member panel to investigate allegations of humanitarian law violations during Israel's Gaza assault, reports said Monday.

The commission of inquiry will be headed by Canada’s William Schabas, an international law professor at Middlesex University in London, the UN council said in a statement quoted by Bloomberg news.

The other members are Amal Alamuddin, a British-Lebanese lawyer, and Doudou Diene of Senegal, the UN’s former Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, the New York-based news agency reported.

The number and whereabouts of Palestinians detained in Gaza during Israel's ground operation remain uncertain, as a rights group compiled an initial list of prisoners thought to be held by Israel.

The Al-Mezan Center For Human Rights and their lawyer Muhammad Jabarin said Monday that 26 Palestinians are being held in Ashkelon jail.

Jabarin told Ma'an that some of the detainees have been presented with charges such as belonging to an illegal organization -- referring to Palestinian political parties -- while the rest are undergoing interrogation and have been denied access to a lawyer.

At least 15 Palestinians have been held under the Unlawful Combatants Law and then released, the lawyer said.

The law allows the detention without trial of Gazans for an unlimited period of time and provides even less protection than administrative detention orders, which are issued in the occupied West Bank.

Mahmoud Abu Rahma, the director of communications for Al-Mezan, told Ma'an that three prisoners were released Sunday but re-arrested at the Erez crossing. He says the lack of access means it is difficult to establish why those named were arrested and how many more are in jail.

Israeli media have hinted that some were released in the Shalit exchange deal in 2011, but Abu Rahma says that the Unlawful Combatants law allows Israeli soldiers to arrest anyone they want until the case is reviewed by an Israeli court.

In some cases, Palestinians are arrested in areas where the Israeli army comes into contact with the civilian population in areas such as Beit Hanoun, where there were numerous reports of home raids in Israel's latest assault.

Initial accounts also suggest that many of those detained underwent physical and psychological torture, Abu Rahma said.

Arbitrary nature of arrests

Addameer prisoner rights group says that at least 250 Palestinians were arrested during Israel's ground operation in Gaza, with 150 detained on July 24 alone.

Randa Wahbe, an advocacy officer with the group, told Ma'an that in some cases Israeli soldiers failed to check the identity of those detained and arrested the relatives of Palestinians recently killed in Israeli attacks.

"Imprisonment is used as a policy of colonization. The ability to arrest as many people as possible moves them away from living normal lives, from building up their society, and fighting for self determination," Wahbe said.

Adalah rights group said that it has no idea about the number of Gaza detainees being held in Israel, having received no response to a petition filed to Israel's Supreme Court.

Laywer Sowsan Zaher told Ma'an that in many cases detainees were forcibly stripped of their clothing and shoes while being arrested, while other photographic evidence indicates that they were blindfolded.

"In many of these circumstances when Israel initiates a war or when they initiate military action, even in the West Bank, such detentions are done in a cruel and degrading way that breaches the rights of detainees," Zaher says.

A large number of detainees were also released after interrogation, a sign that shows the arrests were arbitrary, she says.

Israel's Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by rights group Hamoked to obtain the names of those detained, saying that they would only release information if the family in Gaza requested information about a missing relative.

Given the chaos created by Israel's offensive, it is difficult for families to determine whether a missing relative has been buried under rubble or detained.

During last week's court hearing, Hamoked representatives were not allowed to talk, in an atmosphere described by the group's director as a "circus."

One of the judges also claimed amid the shouting that no other state would treat its prisoners as well as Israel, effectively rejecting claims of illegal arrest and torture.

"They just took whoever they could get their hands on to get information, and maybe if they had to exchange bodies. It was just arbitrary," Dalia Kerstein, the director of Hamoked, told Ma'an.

According to Kerstein, on June 2 there were 201 administrative detainees being held in Israeli jails and by the beginning of August that number had doubled to 449, although it is hard to verify names.

The court told Hamoked that no detainees from Gaza are being held under the Unlawful Combatants Law and are currently in the Israeli Prison Service.

A spokeswoman for the institution, Sivan Weizman, could not provide details about detainees from Gaza, although she said they are spread out over several prisons.

"I can't tell you exactly who we have here from the Gaza operation. All the time there are prisoners, I suppose some of them are still here," she told Ma'an.

"Maybe there are detainees that have not come to the IPS (Israeli Prison Service)," she added.

A rights group Monday condemned an Israeli drone attack on Gaza that killed a Palestinian worker for a human rights organization the day before, a statement said.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that an Israeli drone attack killed 43-year-old Anwar al-Zaanin, a staff member of al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, at 1:20 p.m. on Sunday in Beit Hanoun.

PCHR said Zaanin was standing near a number of maintenance workers from the Beit Hanoun municipality who were repairing a water network near his house when an Israeli drone fired a missile at them.

"As a result, al-Zaanin was seriously wounded and 2 workers were moderately wounded: Majdi Mousa Shabat, 41; and Sofian Khalil Abu Harbid, 40. They were all evacuated to the hospital, but al-Zaanin succumbed to his wounds," the report said.

"While PCHR expresses deep sadness for al-Zaanin's death and passes condolences to his family and to the al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, it strongly condemns this crime which targeted unarmed civilians while carrying out their job."

The rights group said that international silence regarding Israel's "war crimes" encouraged Israeli forces to continue carrying out such actions.

"PCHR calls upon the international community to investigate this and other crimes committed by Israeli forces against unarmed Palestinian civilians in the context of the ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip, and prosecute the perpetrators."

Israeli attacks killed six Palestinians on Sunday before a 72-hour ceasefire came into effect at midnight.

The Israeli army said in a statement Sunday that it had targeted "11 terror squads across the Gaza Strip" throughout the day.

It said Gaza militants had launched 30 rockets at Israel in the same period.

According to PCHR, the Israeli offensive on Gaza has killed 2,008 Palestinians, 1,670 of whom were civilians.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Sunday that the body of missing soldier Oron Shaul is "obviously" in the hands of Hamas, Israeli media reported.

"It's obvious to us that Oron's body is in the hands of Hamas, and we're making every effort to retrieve it," Yaalon said, according to the Israeli news site Ynet.

Yaalon said Israel was making diplomatic efforts in ceasefire talks with Hamas to bring Shaul's body back to Israel, the Ynet report said.

Israeli authorities also suspect the body of soldier Hadar Goldin, a soldier killed on Aug. 1. in southern Gaza as a 72-hour ceasefire fell apart, is being held by Hamas.

The secretary-general of the Palestinian delegation told Ma'an Saturday that Israel had attempted to include the issue of two captured Israeli soldiers' bodies in the negotiations.

Bassam al-Salihi said that Israel had offered to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the bodies of the two soldiers.

Al-Salihi said the delegation had refused to talk about the issue. The Hamas-affiliated al-Qassam Brigades earlier claimed responsibility for capturing Shaul, but denied any knowledge of Goldin's whereabouts.

Hamas said on July 20 that its militants had captured a soldier in Gaza and read out Shaul's identification number on live television, an announcement greeted with joy by many Palestinians due to the potential for a prisoner exchange.

Israel said five days later that Shaul had been "killed in battle," but that his body was missing.

Hamas officials have not said whether Shaul is dead or alive.

Militants of the Islamist movement in 2006 captured soldier Gilad Shalit, who was eventually released as part of a deal in 2011 in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jail.

Israel has also in the past exchanged the bodies of dead Israeli soldiers for Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails, as well as the bodies of militants that were being held by Israel.

An Israel-Hezbollah exchange in 2008 traded the bodies of two Israeli soldiers for five Lebanese prisoners as well as the remains of nearly 200 Palestinian and Lebanese militants in Israeli custody.

More than 6,500 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli jails.

According to Ma'an News Agency, the Palestinian delegation in Cairo has told Egyptian mediators that the next three days will be the last chance for reaching a comprehensive truce agreement with Israel.

Deputy Secretary-General of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Qays Abu Layla, told Ma'an that, as of Thursday, all Israeli responses to ceasefire initiatives have been negative, and Israeli officials are seeking a return to the pre-war status quo.

"The Israeli delegation didn't bring anything new during Thursday's meeting," he said.

"They are talking about types and quantities of commodities to be allowed into Gaza, as well as merchants and other minor issues. Their response was completely negative, and so we rejected it."

The delegation has demanded an end to the Israeli blockade, the release of re-arrested prisoners, reconstruction of Gaza, building a seaport and airport, removing the buffer zone, and enlarging the fishing zone, all of which PLO Executive Commitee member Saeb Erekat holds to be legitimate by International Law, as well as being obligations of Israel under previous agreements.

"The Israeli delegation told the Egyptians that the airport and seaport issues are out of question, and with regards to other Palestinian demands, they brought nothing new at all," the DFLP official added, according to Ma'an.

Israel, in turn, has demanded that PA security be in control of all Gaza crossings, with no further discussion of details, he said, noting that Hamas would not oppose the presence of PA security personnel.

Additionally, the Egyptians have not made concrete proposals for Rafah crossing but have stated, according Abu Layla, that their priority is security.

It has been apparently suggested that some 1,000 officers of the PA presidential guard would be deployed at the crossing and along the Egyptian-Gaza border.

A 72-hour ceasefire brokered by Egypt went into effect at midnight Monday, hours after Israeli bombings killed four Palestinians and armed groups fired rockets toward Israel.

Palestinian factions agreed on the new 72-hour halt to hostilities in Cairo.

Officials said that during the three-day ceasefire, there will be extensive negotiations to reach a more lasting truce.

Meanwhile, humanitarian aid is expected to flow through Gaza crossings.

A Palestinian source in Cairo told AFP that the Egyptian mediators had received "simultaneous consensus" from both the Israeli and Palestinian side.

In order to reach a lasting truce in Gaza, Palestinians have demanded Israel end its eight-year siege on the Strip, release dozens of prisoners whom Israel has re-arrested that were released in 2011 as part of the Shalit exchange, re-open a seaport and airport in Gaza, and create a safe passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Egypt, for its part, insisted on a lifting of Israel's blockade on Gaza.

"This siege should be lifted in accordance to Israel's responsibilities as an occupation force," the foreign ministry in Cairo said in a statement.

Four weeks of bloody fighting have killed more than 1,917 Palestinians and 67 people on the Israeli side, most of them soldiers.

The UN says around three quarters of those killed in Gaza were civilians, around a third of them children.

On the ground, Gazans endured yet another day of fear Sunday as the air force hit dozens of targets, killing four Palestinians only hours before the ceasefire went into effect.

Dozens of child deaths from the month-long Gaza conflict were still being confirmed by DCI-Palestine sources this week, as the end of a 72-hour ceasefire brought further Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli airstrikes.

Hopes had been high among Gaza’s people and the international
community that the ceasefire of the past few days would continue,
allowing for ongoing negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian
leaders, taking place in Egypt. As the agreed ceasefire reached its end,
a volley of rockets launched by Palestinian armed groups resulted in
renewed Israeli airstrikes and further Palestinian deaths, including a 10-year-old boy in Gaza.
The UN said a total of 456 children[PDF] have been killed since the start of Israel’s military offensive on
Gaza. Confirmation of an additional 23 children killed brought the total
number of child deaths independently verified by DCI-Palestine to 264.
On July 22, two children died in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, when an
artillery shell landed nearby. Mohammad Ahmad Asad al-Baddi, 1, died in
his mother’s arms, as he traveled with his family to his uncle’s house,
and an 8-year-old girl named Shahd Muin Ali Qeshta died from shrapnel
wounds, as she played near a window in her house.
One death was confirmed from July 24, when Mahmoud Jihad Nayef Abedin,
12, from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, accompanied his father as he
attempted to rescue a person injured by a missile. A second missile
directed at the same target killed Mahmoud.
Five children from the same family died on July 29 in Al-Zuwaida,
central Gaza. An Israeli airstrike hit the home of the Abu Khusa family
without prior warning, killing Rithal, 8-months, Jana, 11-months,
Mohammad, 1, Yazan, 4, and Shahd, 9.
Three deaths were recorded on July 30. In Jabalia refugee camp in
northern Gaza, 7-year-old Mohammad Taleb Mohammad Assaf died when an
artillery shell landed 30 meters (98 feet) from his home, as he played
in the yard. Flying shrapnel hit him in the head, and he died on arrival
at the hospital. His brother Nashat, 14, sustained severe injuries to
his back and legs and has been awaiting transfer abroad for treatment.
Two more deaths, Osama Mohammad Sihweil, 16, from Beit Hanoun, and Ala
Khader Ramadan Salman, 17, from Beit Lahia, occurred on the same day
when Israeli artillery hit an UNRWA school housing internally displaced
people.
On August 1, the whole of the al-Neireb
family died when their home in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City was
flattened in an Israeli attack. Mohammad Ahmad Mohammad Neireb, 14,
Mahmoud, 10, and Momen, 8, died along with their mother and father.
Aseel Saleh Hussein Abu Mohsen, 17,
died on the same day. News that a ceasefire had taken hold prompted
Aseel’s father, Saleh, to take his daughters home to Shawkah district,
east of the Gaza town of Rafah, to survey the damage and salvage items.
When the ceasefire ended abruptly, they found themselves trapped by
heavy shelling. Saleh attempted to evacuate his daughters, and sent
Aseel with a neighbor to avoid dying together from a single shell. While
crossing Salah al-Din Street, they came under heavy fire, and Saleh
fled with his two other daughters. When he looked back, he saw Aseel had
fallen in a ditch by the side of the street. Unable to rescue his
daughter, he took his two other girls to a hospital for safety, and went
back to search for Aseel with paramedics, but did not find her. After
three days of searching for her, residents recovered Aseel’s body. She
had sustained fatal gunshot wounds to her neck and shoulder.
Eight child deaths were confirmed in one
incident on August 3, when an UNRWA school in Rafah, which was
sheltering 3,000 internally displaced persons, came under attack. A
drone missile landed approximately six meters (20 feet) from the
entrance to the school where children had gathered at the gate to buy
sweets and drinks. Ismail Samir Suleiman Shallouf, 16, Yousef Akram
Saleh al-Skafi and Amro Tareq Said Abu al-Rous, both 15, Ahmad Khaled
Ismail Abu Harba , 14, Tareq Ziyad Suleiman Abu Khatleh, 9, Saqer Bassam
Suleiman al-Kashef, 7, Munther Mohammad Ghanem Abu Rejel, 5, and Aya
Mohammad Ghanem Abu Rejel, 3, all died in the blast.
The international community has consistently criticized Israeli attacks
that have resulted in hundreds of child deaths, with UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stating that the violence in Gaza had “shocked and shamed the world.”
The renewed violence on Saturday sent tens of thousands of civilians who
had previously attempted to return to their homes back to UNRWA
shelters. The violence will also deepen the humanitarian crisis caused
by lack of food, water and power for hundreds of thousands of civilians
in Gaza.